Reverse Shell Cheat Sheet

If it’s not possible to add a new account / SSH key / .rhosts file and just log in, your next step is likely to be either trowing back a reverse shell or binding a shell to a TCP port. This page deals with the former.

Your options for creating a reverse shell are limited by the scripting languages installed on the target system – though you could probably upload a binary program too if you’re suitably well prepared.

The examples shown are tailored to Unix-like systems. Some of the examples below should also work on Windows if you use substitute “/bin/sh -i” with “cmd.exe”.

Each of the methods below is aimed to be a one-liner that you can copy/paste. As such they’re quite short lines, but not very readable.

Further Reading

There’s a reverse shell written in gawk over here. Gawk is not something that I’ve ever used myself. However, it seems to get installed by default quite often, so is exactly the sort of language pentesters might want to use for reverse shells.